Google & NORAD Santa Trackers show St. Nick already in flight for his 2017 trip around the world

It’s Christmas Eve in North America, but on the other side of the globe, Santa has already started his 2017 Christmas trip around the world to deliver gifts.
According to both Google’s Santa Tracker and NORAD’s Santa Tracker, Santa is approximately 14 hours from making his away to North America and has already delivered more than a million gifts.
NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) has been tracking Santa’s whereabouts since 1955 when a Sear’s department store ad mistakenly printed the phone number to NORAD’s headquarters as a hotline to find Santa. The military organization took up the call, and has been following through on the tradition ever since.
Google launched its first Santa Tracker in 2004 using Google Earth. In 2007, Google partnered with NORAD to track Santa, but then in 2012, Google went back to tracking Santa on its own and NORAD partnered with Microsoft.
(You can find out more about Google’s history tracking Santa in